#93 - Why Tai Lopez Bought Pier One
All right. I've been in meetings all day. I, can I tell you, I am a wartime CEO. I love when things are going bad so much more when they're going good.
Why is that? Because you're good at it or it just gets you fired up?
It gets me fired up. I love the adrenaline. Like when Corona hit and we've done good during Corona, it's all good. I mean, you know, we got hurt, but like, we were fine. I loved it. I was like, oh my God, this is living. I feel so happy. Yeah. I love it. Okay.
So you love being wartime CEO. What's the war? Tell us about it.
Well, like, okay. So there's this great book that I'm reading and I think I've seen this across multiple books. It's called Ready, Fire, Aim. I've heard it. Yes. And you know, it's funny. It's published by Agora, that scammy company that I've mentioned tons of times. Wait, that's the name of the book or just What's the name of the framework?
Book. Okay.
Gotcha. Ready, Fire, Aim. Maybe it's a framework. I don't know. Mike, something Matheson. This guy created it.
It's the army guy, the general, right?
Like, no, no, no, no. So I think we're talking about two different, maybe there's two books named the same thing. And it just basically says like, look, from zero to 1 million, you have to just figure out like what it is that people like and make it. And then from like 1 million to 10 million, it's just about hiring people to like help make it possible and like just surviving. And then $10 million to $100 million where we are, you have to innovate constantly and while maintaining process. And that's really hard to do. I mean, that's like a different challenge. I've already, I've overcome the first one, I've overcome the second one. Now this is a new challenge and it's a challenge not for me, but for all of our staff. And that's super hard. And so there's constantly drama of like making people happy. Some employees who started are not the ones to lead. You know, things like that. And I'm dealing with that now. And like, part of me is like, oh my God, this is such a headache. Another part of me is like, this all can crumble. And I love the feeling of knowing I can die tomorrow.
Okay, so what's your approach? Are you, you know, problem, problem gets, problem comes to your attention. So the first question is, are you a problem identifier? Or do you hear about the problems from somebody and then you're like, oh, that's a problem. Okay, I'm going to act on it. Or are you the one who in your company is like, hey guys, this is a big problem.
Uh, both. I both, but where I am is I'm decisive. Like I'm not, when things are going well, I'm like, uh, you know, just keep doing the same bit more. But then when people are, when I hear about problems, I'm like, like someone before this told me of like a problem that happened. I go, okay, you're going to change. We're going to hire this person and we're going to do it today. And so I sent out an email and I go, we, Put this ad up, Madison, start recruiting people immediately. And so to me, it's like I only can hear something one time. I go, we're going to do this. And so what I like to do is, it's like, I self-identify as like a strong belief loosely held, which is I believe something full heart, with all my heart. And then if I hear a little bit of information that changes, I go, oh, okay, fuck all that, we're going the other way, right? So anyway, I love, like, it's like in a battle, I'm like If there's— if we— I so wish I could be in like war sometimes. I'm like, oh, the enemy's coming from here. We're gonna risk our lives and do this, this, and this, and this.
Go, right? So I was thinking about this yesterday because of the presidential debate stuff. So right now we're 4 or 5 months away, whatever it is. Like November is when the election happens, right? So I think that's 4 months away, and there was no— there hasn't been any debates yet. And I was like, when the hell are the debates? Are people gonna— are they gonna do the debates? I think they're gonna do it. When are they? And because I really want to see what happens with Biden versus Trump. And right now all the news, I don't know if you've seen, is that like, oh, Biden is crushing Trump in the polls, it's looking like it's going to be a Biden landslide. And then Biden is kind of like, hey, hey guys, guys, guys, it's not over. Like, make sure, because you know, he needs people to turn out. People need to feel like they're going to lose so they go vote.
You know, I don't pay attention, I don't give a fuck about polls anymore after last election.
Is so that's what polls are saying right now. And, um, and smart people are sort of backing that up, as they tend to do, which they also did in 2016. But anyways, it's looking like Biden's gonna win in a landslide. And so I was thinking about this, and I was like, to me, I don't think that's what's gonna happen. I would want that to happen, but I don't think that's what's gonna happen. So why— I was thinking about, like, why do I think this? Is this just like I'm trying to be contrarian, or I don't trust the polls, or— and I realized what it was is I think that we are in wartime. Not literal war necessarily, although something kind of But kind of like, there's a lot of tension with China. There's the coronavirus, which is like this biological war that we're fighting. There's like the race tensions in America. There's all the stuff. So we are not in peacetime in America. And I think it's because it's wartime, people are going to want a wartime CEO running the country. And I think Trump is going to be seen as the wartime CEO. And that's why I think people are— in times of tension, they're going to go towards the leader they think is the stronger, more decisive, more aggressive leader, and they will ignore the many, many flaws that the guy has. So that's my theory on that. What do you think?
I completely agree. And, and let's preface this by saying we are not saying what we do, what we do or do not want. And, and I always like— I always talk about this shit all the time and be like, what are you, pro-Trump? I was like, well, I'm not telling you if I'm pro-Trump or anti-Trump. I'm just telling you what I think is going to happen, right?
And not only is this not what I want to happen, I also don't know shit about politics. So yeah, sometimes you'll be like, no, no, trust me, this polling data is statistically significant. It's gonna blah, blah, blah. Okay, sure. I'm just saying based on what is a total gut instinct on what I know about people. And I know that when people are afraid, they flee towards strongman leaders. And I think that Trump is gonna be that more than Biden. That's the theory.
I think that they don't, I mean, I think I agree with you, but I would say I don't think that it's just that they go for a certain type of leader. I think that it's more so they don't want change. And so I just Googled this while we were talking. I was just curious about the president during World War I and World War II. So Woodrow Wilson was the president from 1913 to 1921. I don't think—
so the war was '14 to '18.
So '14 to '18.
So he was between— he was before and after the war.
Yeah.
So he got reelected during the war, basically.
Okay. Yeah. So he had 8 years, so 4, uh, 2 terms. And then FDR died in '45 in the middle of the war. So that doesn't exactly, uh, work out, right? But, but I would be curious about, like, in times of massive crisis, what does happen? Um, like Bush won two terms, um, right? Uh, so yeah, I, I, that would be interesting to see, like, what in times of crisis— and I don't know how you define crisis, like maybe the Great Depression— was it the same person over and over again? I don't know. I would, I would love to learn about that. If I had to bet money, which I'm not going to, I would bet on Trump winning.
Right. So, okay, we don't even have to go to politics, but I do like this framework. And I think if you're out there and you don't know what we're talking about, wartime peacetime, you should go figure that out. I think Ben Horowitz's book talks about it.
He also has a great blog post about it.
And then there's other kind of wartime peacetime type of analogies. I think we talked about one on here, which was like pioneers, settlers, and town planners. Did we talk about that? I think maybe. So that's, that's like a thing with your company. Like, there's some people who are pioneers, they're going to be great at figuring out the new thing. Then there's settlers who basically can create the initial camp once you, once you find the new land. And then there's town planners, which are more like the large company, you know, I can run a division of 100 to 1,000 people. And so there's that. And then there's another one I was listening to. So I like the Naval podcast a lot. If you haven't listened to that, It's good, better than this podcast, I would say. He's probably, you know, the sort of best blend of business and philosophy out there, although some people don't like him now because he's getting—
I like Naval. I'm not a Naval dick rider though.
Yeah, I think— is that just because there's so many dick riders that you're like, fuck that, I'm not gonna be one of them? Or is it because you actually don't like the content?
I think there's a lot of emptiness in rich people saying money doesn't make you happy.
And right So there's two ways to think about that. So there's two ways to think about that. One is, yeah, that's easy to say when you get a lot of money. All right, fair, could be true. That could be the truth. And then the other version of it is, what if it— what if there was like this curtain and everybody wants to go to the other side of the curtain, and then people who go through to the other side of the curtain, they're like, hey guys, wait, this is not all it's cracked up to be. Maybe that would be another way of thinking about this, which is that if rich people get to the other side of rich and they're not fulfilled then they're going to go tell everybody, hey guys, this isn't the answer. I thought it was the answer too.
And so I just don't think it's binary like that. That's my point. It's like, not— it's different strokes for different folks. Not everyone is driven by the same stuff. Not everything. Some people are happier rich, some people are not. Like, it's not like a— you've— money is not a universal rule. Yeah, the— it's— money is— it's, it's impossible to say money does not make you happy. It's like, ah, some people it might, many people it will not, right?
By the way, for Naval specifically, he has a pretty good line which I subscribe to, which is that money solves your money problems. It doesn't solve all your problems, but it solves your money problems. And if you don't have your money problem solved, those are big fucking problems in your life. Exactly. He's actually of the type that says everybody who tells you money doesn't make you happy is kind of crazy because money solves a lot of these problems that will make you unhappy. So although it won't make you happy, it gets rid of several of the root causes of unhappiness that people have. But there are others, and you should work on those too. So anyways, on this podcast he was talking about— he was interviewing this guy and this guy was talking about in every company, or really any society, there's three— it's like his thing was about innovations. Like, why don't people innovate? Why don't companies innovate? Why don't societies innovate? Because a lot of people say America doesn't innovate anymore, big companies don't innovate anymore. These three groups: one is chiefs, the other is priests, and and the third is thieves. So he goes, it's chiefs, priests, and thieves that steal innovation. So, okay, what are these three groups? So chiefs are the people in charge, and they typically like the status quo. There's priests, which sort of, you know, are all about sort of the religion of the way things are done, the way they should be done, the rules. And these are usually invisible, mythical, mystical rules that get created. And so at big companies, they always talk about, hey, what sacred cows do you need to kill in order for your company to grow and become new? Well, you need to address the priests in the company who are not going to want you to kill those sacred cows. And the last one is—
did he say to fire them?
I don't know. So he was interviewing him about a book that's not out yet, so I don't fucking know that. But I just thought this was interesting because I started seeing it everywhere when I think about the company I'm in, right? So I'm in a company with over, you know, close to 2,000 people. I would say it is not that innovative as a company. Now, in some ways it doesn't need to be, like The company's just growing like crazy because the market is growing and it's the leader of the market. But if you think about innovation, and there's, there's always a need to innovate, if I looked around, I can identify people who might be chiefs, priests, or thieves in the company. The thieves would be people who are sort of in it for their own self-interest. They like to kind of hoard resources. I mean, they're just looking for their own personal gain at the expense of the greater good. And so I thought that I like these frameworks because it helps you decode a bunch of messy human behavior and just be like, oh, that's a way to think about what's going on here. Does this lens help me? If not, throw it away. But maybe this lens helps. So that's why I wanted to bring it up.
I think that's fantastic. You know, it's funny, everyone— I— some— a listener sent us this like Shopify store of t-shirts he made, and some of them are kind of neat. And I posted about it. I go, shit, are these guys— is this cool? Should we sell this shit? And everyone— I got people texting me saying it's cool. And I would be like, well, I somehow got to like, what do you like about the podcast? And they all said the same shit, which is Sam is blunt and honest. And sometimes I think some people said mostly right. Sean is the king of frameworks and makes complicated things easy to understand.
Yeah, that's cool. I think that's accurate. I would also give you that you're kind of like MacGyvery, like you're a hustler and a schemer in the best way, meaning like you will figure out where's the action, where's the money, where's the demand. I think you're really good at that. And I think when you bring up things, it's because you've sniffed out something and you're like, you know, you've gone and hunted something, you bring it onto the podcast or you bring it into the Facebook groups. And for all the rest of us, it's like, oh shit, this is interesting. I never, I never knew this company's making all this money. I never knew there was this much demand for X. And it's because I think you're very good at sniffing that out.
Well, I didn't want this to be a Sam and Sean jerk-off session, but, uh, anyway, here we are. But the point is, is that you are very good at this framework stuff. I, I'm, I'm writing down chiefs and priests and thieves, and I'm going to apply this. Um, you've done that a couple of times. You did this another time. What was it? I forget when it was, but I was like, oh my God. Yes, he's right. I'm going to do that. So good job with that. Keep doing that. Um, speaking of sniff—
I got one question for you. Do people in, do people at the Hustle listen to this? And is that weird for you that they listen to this? Cause I hope my coworkers just don't listen to this.
Yeah, it is weird.
I don't want to even have that in my head of like, oh, if I mention something that's gone on at my company or whatever, I don't want to have to deal with the actual people who are doing it later because this is my little private space to share with the listeners. But if the listeners are some of those people, I'm like, oh shit, it's tricky.
Yeah, it is weird. So Steph Smith, one of our stars— she's a star. Steph's a star. I love Steph to death. She's listening to this right now, I bet. She, um, told me she listens to every episode. I'm like, really? She goes, yeah, it's so good. And I was like, uh, first, I— it's— there's flattery. Second, it's like I can't believe people like this. That's crazy. Because I mean, I don't know, do you? I don't, I've never listened to one episode because it's hard for me.
Well, first of all, I was here during the conversation, right? So like, I don't need to go listen to it. I know what we said. So that's not, it's not new information.
It's just hard. You're like, I don't, you don't want to. I call it the peanut butter and jelly problem, which is like when my mother would make me something to eat, it was wonderful. And then when I did the same thing, I'm like, oh, this is not that hard. Like, this isn't special at all. This is bullshit. What a fraud.
Probably will.
All right, so you were gonna switch topics. What are you going to?
Okay, speaking of sniffing out stuff, I got some stuff that I've sniffed out just this morning, and we didn't prepare too much for this because it all happened—
this is interesting. You sent this to me.
I loved it. Okay, so let's talk about— well, all right, I'm gonna talk about that one second. The first one is, um, wow, more people are sending me the same decks, so So many people, okay, well, we could just talk about it if you want. We could talk about that first. No, let's talk about this other one first. Okay, so I just read about this guy and I just tweeted about it. It's so interesting. There's this guy, it's called Bonsai, I don't know how to pronounce this because I don't know where the space is in the word because I'm just looking at the URL. Okay, here it is. Fuck, I can't pronounce this. Bonsai, B-O-N-S-A-I. A-I, so bonsai, and then mirai.com. Okay. Um, are you going to that?
You got to go on it right now. Okay, so I'm seeing trees. We connect, we create trees that connect you. Okay, what's happening here?
Okay, this fucking guy is brilliant. He is the Bob Ross of bonsai trees. And if you go to, go to that URL I said, but add live in the beginning.
Mm, okay. Oh, I see it now. Okay. If you go to live.bonsaimirai.com/pricing, you can get to a pricing page at least.
Yeah.
$17.99 per month for— you can build your bonsai skills on his revolutionary livestream.
Yeah. So you pay $20 a month or $30 a month and you get to watch him do bonsai trimming and people are loving it. And I looked at his traffic and he has peaked in April and he is getting somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 people people a month coming to this website and they want to both watch him trim bonsai trees and buy bonsai trees and buy bonsai. I mean, I know nothing about this, this world. I don't know what, it's just freaking crazy. So he has 230 videos in his library with 360 hours of bonsai education. 50 different tree species worked on and hundreds of different techniques. It is nuts. This is so cool. I love this. And so his take is this is, this is an alternative to Headspace.
Okay. So it's like some kind of active meditation basically.
And it is so cool.
I'm a, I'm a big believer in this. Okay. So this, you just made me realize why I like this whole set of things. Meditation is cool. I think everybody wants the benefits of meditation, but I would say the majority of people really struggle to meditate regularly. But what most people don't realize is that meditating is not just sitting in a room with your legs crossed and breathing and not thinking any thoughts, right? There's a whole bunch of different forms, including what this guy's doing, which is bonsai tree trimming, but also including that workout thing we talked about, the happy body. It's like this low-intensity, slow breath-based, like weightlifting that honestly just felt like meditation more than weightlifting. Um, there was exactly, there's other things. Why do people like hiking? Well, it's because there's a whole bunch of things that, okay, I'm really on the Naval train right now, but I gotta say another line of his that's money, which is most people want peace of mind, but really they should want peace from mind. And people just want to get away from their mind. And you know, your mind living in your head makes you unhappy a lot of times. And you'll notice this if you're in a social situation but you're in your own head, you will not be enjoying that social situation. If you are trying to give a speech but you're in your own head editing your thoughts, thinking about what you're going to say, you will not be doing a good job nor enjoying it. And so same thing here. There's a whole bunch of activities that can get you out of your own head. Meditation is one, maybe bonsai is another, exercise is another. And so people are— music festivals is another. If you stimulate yourself with enough loud music, drugs, dancing, sweating, heat, alcohol, whatever else, you will stop living in your own head. You'll lose yourself in the moment. And, um, those feelings are kind of euphoric and I think people are chasing those. And so if you can develop something like that, which might be as simple as those silly Instagram, like cutting of sand videos or whatever, like there's apps in the app store that are these calming, calming videos on loop. So it's kind of like calm.com. It's kind of like the Calm meditation app., but instead it's like a TikTok feed of just soothing soap cutting, sand cutting, cake cutting videos. And people love these for relaxation. So I think there's a whole class of ideas that are like this.
And let me give you more classes. And I am just riffing right now where I have not planned this at all. And I'm just, this is, this is all off memory. Okay. So here's 3 examples. The first example is there's a TV show that I used to watch as a kid that I see, uh, no one's really done a good job of making it again for digital. It's called How It Works. Do you remember that show?
I remember the show, yeah.
All they did was they would say, today we're gonna do a Ferrari factory, a soap factory, and a factory that makes hoses, right?
And they— what's it called— fortune cookie factory. I still remember that episode in my head.
And they don't really talk much. The guy talking is a— it's a man that with a deep voice, and he talks a little bit. He goes, first they source the rubber and mix it with black to make the rubber black, or whatever they say. And then you just see like a machine mixing rubber for like 3 minutes. Then they go, after that, the people put it into a mold to make it round. And then you just see that. And then, and then they stretch it out. Like, next step is like, boom, there's your hose. And they do that for an hour. And it was wonderful. I used to watch it as a kid all the time. The second example is ASMR barbers. Me and my friend Neville. ASMR. Yeah. There's barbers. Me and my friend Neville have sat and watched this. There is, for some reason, this is really popular in India where you type in ASMR barber. There's a barber with 666,000 subscribers on YouTube. And all you do is watch him shave people's heads. I have watched so many hours of this. Me and Neville will sit down and just watch this. I went to his house one time and I saw— used his computer or Apple TV to go to Google or something, and I saw that like the link was clicked. I go, Neville, do you also watch this guy in India who shaves heads? And he goes, yeah. And we just— I go, me too. And we just watched him shave people's heads with a straight razor.
So is, is this the sound thing where you like— because there's a different barber thing I've seen where you put your headphones on and it sounds like a barber shaving right above your right ear only. It's kind of like a stereo sound or whatever where you can kind of feel where it's going behind your head, in front of your head. It's not that, that's a different experience.
No, it's different.
So this is just watching the guy do it.
Yeah. Um, and so they have so many views and I have sat for hours and watched it. There's this one, okay, it's this Indian guy, I think he's Indian. Yeah, he's in India. ASMR Saloon and Massage. This guy, uh, has 10 million videos of someone getting their head shaved. That's all it is. He doesn't talk. All he does is shaves his head, and I've watched it so many times.
There's another version of this, um, a little bit— it's not ASMR exactly, but this guy Munir, have you seen him on Instagram?
No.
There's this hairstylist in Dubai or something like that, and girls will fly around the world to just go to this guy's salon because they've seen him on Instagram, and he just cut— he colors and cuts your hair, and his— he does an Instagram video. It's kind of like a music video basically of him just, he grabs your hair, he washes it, so you see the wash, you see the color, you see the foil being wrapped, then you see boom, the color's done and he cuts the hair and then he does this thing at the end where he just flicks the hair with his hands and the way he flicks the hair, everybody loves the flick and this guy Munir has like, I don't know how many followers on Instagram.
Does he even talk?
But I listen to a lot of these, no he doesn't talk, no there's nothing. It's just the same song every single time so it's like hypnotizing.. It's always the same song, I believe. And this guy has 6.6 million followers on Instagram. I watch a shit ton of his videos and I couldn't care less about like women's hairstyle, but there's something addictive to watching this.
I agree. And I think that anyone who has a product or service that you can do this, you just film it for 30 minutes and some, and there's a few characteristics that people love to watch. The third one is called primitive technology. I was I followed this guy since the day he launched. He launched 5 years ago. He had his original videos. If you go to his YouTube page and do sort by oldest, his original videos, it's a 30— 11-minute video, 4-minute video, 4-minute video. And then I believe he used to, or maybe he still does, has 30-minute videos. He has a piece of property in the woods and he builds stuff. So he's building a hut, he's starting a fire, with sticks. He's building a stone axe. And he has— and he blew up. His very first video that he posted, he accumulated like 2 million subscribers. Now he has 10 million subscribers. He doesn't talk. He doesn't say a word. All you do is you watch him build this hut. And it is mesmerizing. And now he has a book, A Survivalist's Guide to Building Tools, Shelters, and More. But he could do anything he wants, this guy. It's pretty amazing. All of it, literally all of his videos, you can go and look at this, have at least 5 million views and the highest ones have 30 or 40 million views. The highest one has 74 million views and all he's doing is building a hut. This is fucking amazing.
Wild, dude. I didn't know about any of this. That's amazing. So I'm just looking at, I'm just looking at his stuff right now. It's cool. Every video has like over 10 million views. And he's not like, he's not like, oh, I'll teach you how to do this.
He's no, he's just doing— literally, he doesn't say one word.
What kind of genius is this guy? Like, who has the creative genius to like do this, come up with this, and actually make it successful? That's amazing.
I mean, he has—
let's see, he has, um, we should just do a silent podcast, just no, just us breathing.
Wow. Okay.
Oh, that's crazy. This is so—
okay, so relaxation, uh, yeah, I don't even know what we bucket this as.
Takeaways is these small— I guarantee this bonsai guy makes a wonderful living, and this primitive technology totally does too. The takeaways for anyone listening is these relaxation things are awesome. They're probably a lot harder to do than we are making— like, oh, all you do is—
these are the winners.
Yeah, yeah. So there's definitely more to it, but they work. And the second thing, it's cool to see people make livings off small-ass fun stuff.
Yeah, exactly. Some niche they're super passionate about.
Let's get to the less niche thing. So I will set the context here. So I read about this today. Pier 1, they sell bedding stuff, they sell furniture, they sell home goods. They went bankrupt. And there was this company called Retail Ecommerce Ventures, really bland name, that acquired the IP, I guess you could say. So what they're going to do, it seemed like, was they're going to—
Did they acquire it? It's like done?
Yeah, they are— sorry, I think they have the winning bid and the paperwork signs in like a very short amount of time.
I see.
Okay. And so their move is that they're going to turn Pier1.com into a viable store and sell all the stuff online. I don't understand how that works with like the brick-and-mortar stuff. I don't quite get it, but I remembered I recognized this name and I realized, oh, I'd read about this when someone bought Dress Barn. Dress Barn is like a middle-of-America store. I grew up with it where it's like cheap clothes. You just go and you kind of pick stuff out of a bin. And the same company bought the IP for that. And I did some research. I mean, I just Googled it. It wasn't that hard. And the guy who owns that is Tai Lopez. And for those of you who don't know, Tai Lopez is this guy. I'm going to try and reserve judgment, but many accuse him of being a quick, a get-rich-quick guy. He sells courses on how to start a social media agency or how to find your calling in life. And he was most famous because he was one of the first advertisers on YouTube. And he had this video where he goes, here I am in my garage with my Lamborghinis. And I've, I read a lot of books and you should read books too. Buy my course and I can just teach you what I've read in these books. And so he's spending $30 million to buy Pier 1 along with other stuff. And we got ahold of his deck. I didn't even read it, but I read it. I've talked a lot and I've set the stage.
You want to— yeah, so this is one of the most interesting things I've seen in a while. So it's not just Tai Lopez, it's also this other guy, Alex Meyer. Alex Meyer was the founder and CEO of Zoosk. He and Tai Lopez— so Zoosk sold for $284 million, I think. It was a dating app that was really popular in the App Store. It's kind of like a low-level dating app, but they, they had gamed Facebook ads. So he had like found an arbitrage of Facebook, I believe, early on, had grown a lot through that, maybe some other things. I'm not super familiar with their story, but successfully built Zoosk. Then him and Tai Lopez built MentorBox, which, um, does pretty well. So MentorBox, I'm gonna just do a little calculation. Let me just get a little estimate here.
Yeah, and on his website they say how big MentorBox is. They say how big the variety of businesses are that they've acquired.
Yeah. How big is MentorBox?
The claim, it says 60,000 subscribers.
Yeah. So, so 60 or 70,000 subscribers. I don't know exactly what their price point is, but I think it's doing, um, over $1 million a month. So I think it's safe to say, uh, about $10 million a year. I actually subscribed to it to see what it is. Cause I was—
how much does it cost?
Looking at businesses like this, there's like a $1 trial. And then I think it costs like $10 or something like that. Maybe $20. You get a book. Um, or some reason you get access to these videos. I don't know. I don't use it. It's not, it's not that good in my opinion. But anyways, this MentorBox does over $10 million a year easily. And so Tai Lopez, you're absolutely right. Most people view him as kind of like he's a meme, he's a joke. You've got to kind of respect the hustle in a way, like he's not a nobody. So, you know, good on you. But he really sold out hard on the kind of self-help, I'm a rich guy, let me teach you to be rich type of thing, to the point where successful and rich people typically don't look at Tai Lopez as like someone they admire. He's not Richard Branson, he's Tai Lopez. And so, but this Dress Barn thing was interesting. They didn't say how well the Dress Barn acquisition has done since they— so basically they're buying these old retail stores that have a big brand and then they're relaunching them as e-commerce only stores. They're saying, hey, What if we had the brand recognition of a Pier 1, but none of the brick-and-mortar headaches that Pier 1 has? And can we just sell Pier 1 as an e-commerce-only store? Pier 1 was doing about $300 million a year in e-commerce revenue, $1 billion of total revenue, and I'm not exactly sure why it's going bankrupt or why they, if these guys are getting this for $30 million, that's a fucking steal unless there's something else I don't know, which could very well be the case, 'cause we don't have their books. But this is an amazing business opportunity, I think, actually. So, you know, props to those guys, because when I saw this, I was like, this is a really smart play. Pier 1 has— Pier 1's actually like more of like a tier 1 brand. It's like much bigger than Dressbarn. And taking— if you can get the rights to the name and the inventory to be able to sell this online, I mean, that's a— if the online store, the online business is already doing over $250 million a year, You're picking up that asset for $20-30 million. That's a steal.
So I'm not sure. Here's what you get when you buy Pier 1. You get 30 million customer database, which basically means their email address and their buying history, I think. I don't know what else. Of those 30 million, 8 million of them are activated or active, which I don't know how that's defined. And most of the database can be retargeted on Facebook. And the guy who bought who's Tai Lopez's partner, was a dating app person. And the dating app people are notoriously— and they're in the same category of gamers, which is— or gaming people, which doesn't mean that they're scammy at all. It just means that they're incredibly savvy marketers, and sometimes that involves like some shady tactics. And but that's okay.
That just means dating apps are user acquisition companies that happen to sell dating, and gaming apps are user acquisition companies that happen to sell games. And so both of them, you live and die on how effectively you're able to buy user and make money off that user very quickly, which sounds like all business, but it is because they're typically low retention businesses. Um, you're kind of churning and burning through users at a pretty high rate.
Exactly. So you're probably sophisticated at customer acquisition. And so the theory is, is if you could take someone who's that sophisticated at that and throw them at a more stickier product that's actually like people love or that's in a better industry, you're gonna have success. So it's interesting. I think that these guys did this before corona and then that shit happened and now all these guys are going bankrupt. So we're good on, I mean, they're set to succeed. It's interesting.
Yeah, I think this is honestly, this is pretty great. I'm kind of jealous that I didn't do this.
Well, you could have done it with Brandless, except you'd have to— so Brandless was a company that was like a gen— like they— brandless.com. We talked about them on here before all this happened, and they sold like, like basically the Target brand of stuff. That Brandless wanted to redo Target brand and make the generic brand, generic brands that were high, high, medium quality but low priced. And they went out of business, but you'd have to assume, I think, like $30 million in debt or something crazy.
Yeah, which I'm guessing is also the reason that this business is so devalued slash going bankrupt, right? The revenues are actually quite high, but there must be some just huge overhang or debt obligation or something that's causing them to declare bankruptcy rather than find a buyer. But yeah, if they could become kind of like a Wayfair junior, that's pretty good. Wayfair is like a $7 to $8 billion company. And if they can take Pier 1 into an online-only brand, if they can shed some of that liability in the transaction, that's a win. And so I'm curious if we're going to see more of this. Are we going to see Dollar General? Are we going to see Crate Barrel? Are we going to see—
No, you won't see Dollar General. Dollar General. So do you know about the dollar stores?
I've heard that they're thriving during COVID in general.
You know why?
No, why?
Okay. So in the early 2000s, I think that's when the first one— I'll bring you— you can actually look this up. If you look up Dollar General, they're all— but Dollar General, and then where's the other 3 names? There's 3 of them, I think. Dollar General, Family Dollar, I believe, Family Dollar, and maybe there's one more.
Dollar Tree.
Dollar Tree. Those 3 were acquired by the big private equity firms. So KKR, which is one of the, maybe the 3rd biggest private equity firm. The 2nd one, another brand was acquired by Blackstone, or BlackRock, Blackstone, which is I think the biggest private equity firm. And these fucking guys turn these damn things around so much. They like said like, all right, we're gonna start selling milk, we're gonna start doing this, we're gonna start doing that. And it cost $1 million to open a store, and they go, we're opening up a store everywhere. And they went on a spree where they opened up these fucking stores everywhere, and they are crushing it. All the private equity firms pounced on this at the same time. And dollar stores are killing it.
Yeah, I've heard about that. My, uh, I know somebody who is like the preferred real estate developer for them. So I was like, dude, how's COVID? You know, you do retail development. He's like, well, luckily my tenants were Hobby Lobby, Dollar General, and, you know, basically a bunch of stores that actually have continued to thrive even in like, even as retail continues to die. So, um, I found that kind of interesting. Now what's interesting here is that they're actually buying the IP for Pier 1. They're not buying the company. And so I think they're just basically buying the brand, the rights, maybe the rights to sell online. I'm not sure exactly. This deck is a little bit light. So, um, yeah, I don't know. It's interesting.
I think Sharper Image did the same thing. If you want a case study on how this is done, I'm almost positive that Sharper Image went through an issue where it went out of business and they only sold the website and it ran as its own thing.
I would also be interested to see if somebody's going to do this with other struggling brands like a 24 Hour Fitness. So 24 Hour Fitness is also closing down stores, going through bankruptcy, has a huge customer database of members who have active memberships. And if you could say, okay, cool, we're, we're going to buy the 24 Hour Fitness IP and we're going to take it to a digital fitness brand. And you basically rip off either the Sweat app or like Freeletics or one of these like workout apps. And you like basically white label the app experience, but you combine that with the 24 Hour IP and customer database. Brand name. I think that that is, you know, you could probably create a lot of value there depending on what price you could get in. So I think this is cool.
Yeah, it is cool. And if anyone is caring about this, and we'll move on, uh, there's two other companies I know that have done this. The first is Iconix Brand. Iconix Brand owns a ton of stuff including Rocawear, Jay-Z's thing. So they bought Jay-Z's thing. Mud Jeans, you remember Mud Jeans? Um, bro, they own, um, Ed Hardy, Joe Boxer, all these kind of like third, fourth-tier brands, right? They've done it and they're quite large. And then the second one that's done it even better, and I was— I, I don't want to give stock advice, but I, I think I was gonna— I like this brand, uh, it's called VF Corporation, and they own Dickies, Vans, which is on a tear, Jansport, Timberland, The North Face, and a few others.
Wow. North Face is pretty big. Uh, okay, cool. Um, what else, what else do we want to talk about? There's a bunch of things on this list. Anything stand out to you or anything you wanted to bring up that was interesting?
I'm going to defer to you.
All right, let's do a quick one. Uh, you saw this Twitter hack yesterday that was about like, you know, taking over Elon and Jeff Bezos's accounts, and a whole bunch of people were like, you want to give the—
you want to set the—
yeah, so a bunch of peop— so there was a takeover of a whole bunch of blue checkmarked face, uh, verified kind of Twitter verified accounts, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and others. And they went, they posted a thing. So what I saw was basically Jeff Bezos post something along the lines of, you know, guys, I've done so well, I really just want to give back. You know, I want to make sure I get back to the community for, you know, for the next 30 minutes. Anybody who sends me 1 Bitcoin, I'll send 2 back. You know, 30 minutes only. Good luck. Have fun, guys. And then Elon's account retweets it and basically is like, ah, me too, brother. I mean, I'll do this.
Elon got hacked too.
Yeah. I was like, I'll do the same, blah, blah, blah. And so they did this. And then the funny thing is that because all Bitcoin transactions are, uh, recorded on the blockchain and they posted the public address of the wallet, you could see how many people in real time are getting duped by this. And so like, you know, last I saw it, a hundred-something thousand dollars had been transferred to these wallets. That will never be recovered.
I'm looking online now, it looks like $118,000.
$118,000. And then Twitter kind of like locked all blue check accounts, so they kind of just hit the safety switch and just said no blue check can do anything on Twitter right now to like stop the activity. They figured out that they posted something that said they think that some like a moderator or an admin had been compromised. So somebody who had admin rights, which gave you rights to like, uh, manage like the blue check mark accounts they either bribed the person or they were working with them or they took over that person's account or something like that, and that's how the vulnerability worked. That's why they were able to get access to everybody's all at once. And so interesting, just crazy scenario in general. And then two, a whole bunch of people were like, dude, if you had, if you had access to Jeff Bezos, Elon, and whoever's Twitter accounts and the best you could get was $118,000, like, I just saw that same thing. And so what will— and then there was a bunch of people saying, what would you do? Like, okay, let's put yourself in the criminal mindset for a second. How would you maximize the value of this? So I'm curious, what would you do?
I don't know. I mean, I guess, I mean, look, that's like upside. That's a, uh, I mean, like they got a— I don't know how hard it was, but they got $100 grand off that. That's not a lot of money, but like they probably will never get caught. Right. So if, You could blackmail them. You could say, Elon, I know you're cheating, or I know you're— you'll probably get caught, right? Uh, what could you do?
So, so those are the— so two of the most suggested things were blackmail through the DMs, or, um, or like short the stock. So a lot of people were like, oh dude, if you have Elon's account, you just, you know, post something that you're, you know, you're sick and taking leave, or that you're gonna do some crazy shit because you tend to tweet that stuff anyways. And you short Tesla stock, and then that's how you'll profit off this thing. Yeah, I was like, dude, that'd be the most easy to catch thing that it could be. And maybe with Tesla, because there's so much short volume, that like you would just be lost in the sea. But it would be like so obvious if you did it with like Amazon stock.
Or what would you— right, so you'd have to say like, um, like, things are not going well from Elon's thing. Or for, or for, uh, Bezos, you have to say like As of today, I'm officially stepping down.
Right, exactly. Like, you don't say you're stepping down and like, you're the key man risk of those businesses. And so, you know, the stock market would panic if Elon was stepping down from Tesla or something like that.
Now, I don't know, or you could do the other way. You could be like, you should be like, we are highly considering buying Tesla. Like, if you're Bezos, right?
Yeah, one way to do it would be to send an act, you know, something that looks like it's meant to be a DM but actually accidentally got tweeted about like buying some penny stock or something like that. You take advantage of the pump. I don't know, there's a whole bunch of random things. I didn't see any ideas that I loved, but I did think it was crazy that this happened. And it's so crazy that there's all these vulnerabilities. I mean, through whether it's email, social media, like the whole world is so fragile really. Like your people's lives, companies are really fragile. And there's all these other like, you know, risks that are just out there. That's very hard to do. Like Slack, for example. If Slack gets compromised and your whole company runs on Slack and your entire Slack chat history gets exposed, like, you know, you could be screwed. And, you know, we just trust Slack and we trust Google Docs and we trust all these things.
Amazon runs their own for a lot of these. Amazon doesn't use Google Hangouts. They have Chime, their own shitty version of Zoom, but it's Amazon's own, so they have no risk in that sense. But Twitch got acquired, right? So we use Slack, which they don't get to use, which Amazon doesn't get to use. We use Google Docs. We use all these things because we were, you know, it'd be pretty disruptive to change the whole company's like operating system.
Well, I didn't know about this when I— when someone at Facebook was like, yeah, we use, I think, Outlook. I was like, Outlook is fucking stupid. Why? And they go, because we don't want Google spying on us, right? I was like, that—
Yeah, I was like, that would never happen. And now I realize, yeah, it can happen.
Yeah, somebody tweeted this the other day. They were like, you know, um, can we all just agree that like God mode type features of any app where basically like, you know, you have some super admin account that can like see other people's activities. Like, there's all these good reasons why you would want to be able to do that, to moderate, to fix issues. Somebody says, oh, I need this fixed in my account, you're like, oh, don't worry, I'll take care of it for you, or, you know, whatever. Uh, but there's so much harm that can be done with this. And, um, just a word to the wise, if you're using a startup, like, let's say you're using some startup medical app, like, oh, telemedicine, and you got this, you know, you, you've been a little promiscuous, you came down with this STD, and this— there's this app that's this new app from Silicon Valley, you read about it at TechCrunch, and all you got to do is take a picture of your junk and this doctor will prescribe you some medicine. You don't have to go to the doctor's office. Just know, at that 8-person startup, there's like 6 engineers that see every photo that gets uploaded into the app, and there's probably like a Slack bot that's just tweeting about it, that's just posting every diagnosis. And that's usually for bug fixing and shit like that, but like, your shit is not secure with startups.
Yeah, and that, I, I, that's something that's outside of my world, and I've learned about it recently where these companies are building stuff. I'm like, man, you should sell to companies instead of people. And I look at their product roadmap and they had this like SSO feature and I was like, what the fuck is SSO? Like, I guess that stands for, what's that, single sign-on?
Yeah.
And I was like, well, just use like, I don't understand. And apparently I sound pretty ignorant. Everyone's probably laughing at me who knows about this.
I guess it's security around Everybody who works at a big company is like, oh yeah, you know, when we need to use a service, like if I log in to watch our company all hands, like I don't know if you do an all hands through Zoom, but like when we do an all hands, you have to log in with your company, company user ID and password, single sign-on, in order to access it. So to make sure that outsiders can't access your stuff if they had the link.
And you have to like enter in your fingerprint, all your metrics, all your, uh, not really fingerprints, just not your fingerprint, sorry.
Um, what's that thing called, the VP, or, um, oh, like, yeah, it's like there's like a USB little thing I have where I have to push into it on my computer, and that's my like hardware password that I have to use to log into certain— to go see my healthcare benefits or whatever. And by the way, there's companies that just make single sign-on as a service. It's a great little startup. They just say, hey, if you want to get your app enterprise ready, you're going to need single sign-on. Trust me, it's a pain in the ass. Just like you don't want to build payment software and fraud detection and Stripe just does it for you, we do single sign-on for you.. And I was like, when I saw that, I was like, oh, that's a great idea.
Yeah.
I think Okta might do this as well. Yeah. Yeah. That's like a $10 billion company. I know nothing about, but any— but anyways, so what was I saying? Oh, the same thing goes for any like new email client. You're like, oh, this new email thing came out, Superhuman, and I'm really pumped about it. It's cool. You could swipe to the left and the right and it's like Tinder for email or whatever. And you give it access to your email. Like, giving access to email is like insane. Giving access to a Chrome extension when it says, uh, Chrome extension, we'd like to read and write all data on every web page you visit— that's insane. It's insane to do.
Everyone's gonna know Sean likes midget porn.
Yeah, exactly. Like, that's my business, what I, what I like to do and how small or big they are. Anyways, people are insane. There's lots of security vulnerabilities. Okay, one last topic. Um, oh, I have one on here that's not even research, but I just wrote, why the hell do we use signatures?
Like, that's crazy. You just did your taxes yesterday, huh?
No, I know I'm doing house sale stuff, but, uh, they're like, oh yeah, can you sign this? And by the way, if you, if you sign this, you know, you're claiming this. And I'm like, dude, this signature I made with like my pinky on my keypad, and it looks different than every other signature I ever did. And in general, signatures are stupid. And also, when I go to some place and I sign, and they're like, you need to sign this waiver, and it's like nothing's in it for me, it's only just liability protections for them, I literally just write the word Jane Doe in cursive and they just take it. And I'm like, look, if this ever came back to me and they're like, you signed this, I'm like, what are you talking about, dude? This says Jane Doe, are you crazy? I didn't sign that.
Uh, I don't understand that either. We— when we were doing our taxes, I had to sign some stuff and I'm like— and Sarah had to like— she had like wait for me to do it. And like, she called me home, was like, hey, can you come sign this stuff? I'm like No, just you do it. Just write my name. Like, I don't understand.
And we've had that authorized to forge your signature. Like, we're not friends.
Yeah. Well, I was like, and there was another time where I was out of town and one of our accountants had to like sign a check. And I'm not going to say the outcome to the story because I don't even know if it's illegal or not. But I go, can you just like, like, I know what the check is. I hear you. I'm telling you, I'm on board. Sign my name on it. Or I was like, video me, Edie, and I will watch you sign my name on it. Like, I— a lot of people are like, no, no, we can't do that. I'm like, I, I don't understand the intent. Like, if the intent is there and I approve, right?
Maybe there should be like an on-the-fly power of attorney where you can grant like a one-time power of attorney to somebody just through a little video face message, uh, some, some startup like that. Okay, here's a little idea. Well, here—
but by the way, when I was 19 using fake IDs, I would like 'Find someone who looked like me and give them $100,' and they give me their ID. I remember I would sign the debit, or I would like sign some paperwork, or like— no, I remember what they would do. They would make me sign a piece of paper at the liquor store, and they're like, 'This— I got busted a couple times ago. This signature doesn't look like the one on the ID.' And that's how I got caught a few times.
Well, yeah, my handwriting is inconsistent. I don't write—
yeah, I was like, 'Well, I've changed,' or—
yeah, exactly.
Or like, if you're at a bar, you're like, I don't know, dude, I'm wasted.
Like, well, dude, mine— I used to, because my name starts with the S as yours does too, uh, I used to do the, the really fucking lame thing of doing that little chain link S as the start of my autograph, uh, you know, like the 3 lines, 3 lines, and connect them, make a little chain link. And then like, of course, I got above the age of 18 and I was like, what am I doing? I can't go forward like this. So I changed my, my signature from there.
Yeah, so it could have changed. And you probably opened a bank account when you're like 14.
And now I have to explain why I've changed. And then they look at it. They're like, nah, I understand, bro. Don't worry. Okay, here's a little idea that's sort of interesting about the house sale process I thought was cool. So I'm selling my house. And I use an agent who's with Compass. And Compass has this feature that is really cool that I wonder if it's extendable to other— this might already exist. But I think it's a cool little thing to think about, might spur some new ideas. So in the house sale process, the agent wants me to invest in my house and like stage it really well, you know, fix up the landscaping, repaint everything, do all these like fix-ups, right? And, and I'm like, cool, like in theory, like I get it, you know, that's gonna help sell the house. But like, also, I've already like moved mentally and physically at this point.
And like, I don't really deal with it.
Yeah, I don't want to deal with it. I also don't want to spend $25,000, which is what mine's coming out to, to like do these improvements. Even though logically in my head, I'm like, there's probably a good ROI for every dollar I do into fixing this up. I just don't want to pay more money for this asset that I'm selling, like, when I'm not even sure if I'm gonna make money or lose money on the sale. And so he's like, don't worry, Compass has this thing where we'll just take it out of the escrow. So you just say yes, like, yes, I'm cool with staging it and painting it and whatever within this budget. But like, you don't worry, you don't have to write a check.
It's amazing, right? And I'm like this. And it's so stupid that that changes my decision-making, but it absolutely does. The fact that I don't have to take out my wallet and pay, and I can just say, yeah, take it out of the sale price when it's the same thing. It's the same exact thing, but it's not the same thing. And I instantly was like, okay, cool. Yeah. And then they hit me up like, oh, by the way, we think it would be good if we touched this garage up too. Can we do that? I'm like, yeah, put it on my tab. You know, it's coming out of the sale price anyways. I don't have to take out a dollar.
It's way easier to spend money.
So I found this to be— it's a no interest, and they're like, no, it's a no interest loan. And they— because they know that, hey, getting you to do this will help the sales. So they're like incentivized to offer this as a service, as a short-term, like 2 to 3 month loan that they have to the front. And, um, so I was wondering, A, does this exist for any house sale? Because it should. I used it— I think they use a service called Notable. So it's kind of interesting company to check out. I think that company might offer this to everybody. But then I wondered, like, how many other things are there like this where you get money back? Yeah, you like— it's like, take it out of the— take it out of the thing. Like, taxes is another good one where it's like, oh yeah, I don't want to pay for you to do my taxes, just take it out of my refund or put it up, add it to my bill later, you know? And so where are there other opportunities to reduce the money out of pocket up front? And I would say Affirm or Afterpay are a great example of this, where they're like, Hey, you want to buy this thing on it, you know, but like, you don't want to pay the full price for it right now, pay in 12 installments of, you know, $100 and you can get it instead of fronting out.
That's a great question.
So there, I think these are, these are great businesses to start if you can find that opportunity where people don't want to pay now. Like maybe it's property taxes or something crazy like that. Maybe, maybe there's some, maybe it's, you know, I don't know, like income share agreements. This is the same thing for income share agreements, right? It's like No, no, no, don't pay for school. We'll take it out of your salary when you, when you're done. It's like, it's the same thing. I was going to take a loan and pay it back after I get a job, or I just don't take the loan and I pay it back after I get the job, like as a shadow loan. And so income share agreements work the same way, but psychologically people view it very differently and they're more willing to do it that way. So anyways, I think that's a cool situation. If you're listening to this, you know another area where that would apply. I want to hear it.
Yeah, I completely agree. I just like, when I was doing my taxes, I, it was the same thing. I was like, oh yeah, just add, add, add out of that. I'm like, it's free money anyway. You know what I mean?
Yeah, exactly.
Sean, I looked at your house listing. It's listed for a lot cheaper than you bought it. Are you going to lose a lot of money on this, or is the strategy that people are hopefully going to bid?
Strategy is just to drive enough foot traffic, drive a lot of foot traffic by making it low priced. And then get at least 2 bidders and then just bid them up against each other.
You think that's—
the listing is wrong. It says my house was sold, originally bought for $2.4 million, but that's my— that's the neighbor unit. So Zillow has it mislabeled. So I got mine for $2.1 million, not $2.4 million. So it looks like it's at this huge discount, which is not true. It's at like a small discount.
But do you regret buying it?
Yes, I regret buying it.
Would you regret— have regretted buying it regardless of Corona or not?
Yeah. Even if I had sold it for like a slight profit or whatever, I just could have done better things with that money, right? Like I had to put $500,000 down and it's like that. I lived there for 3 years. Like the rate I could have grown that $500,000 through other investments would have been much higher than the rate of my real estate appreciation, or in this case, depreciation that I ended up with. Plus, homeownership is just a pain in the ass. There's just headaches along the way. And renting is way more fun, way more flexible, way less headache.
And will you ever buy it? Well, are you gonna buy a place again?
So now my— because I was talking to my brother-in-law about this, and he's buying, and I was like, dude, he's buying an expensive house, like, 5 times more than our house. And I was like, who is crazy? My brother-in-law. And so I was like, why are you doing this? And he was like, he's like, the thing— he's like, I always lose money on real estate. He's like, but The thing is, once you get to a certain point where like, I must live in this neighborhood, like I want to live here, this is the place I want to live. Because sometimes those places just don't rent, like they only sell. He's like, so the only time to— he's like, my rule now is the only time I buy is when I really want to get into a neighborhood or to a house that I just can't get for rent, then I'll buy. And it's my tax for really wanting that place. But if otherwise, if I'm flexible, then renting all day.
And so I'm fucking buying a $10 million home.
People got money, dude. People got money.
What does your brother-in-law do for a living?
Goddamn, he refuses to come on the podcast because he doesn't want to draw attention to his business and what he does and all that, how much money he's got, all that stuff.
He must be in real estate. Sean's dropped hints. I think he's in real— uh, I don't know.
Yeah, no, he does stuff in real estate. Yeah, it's real estate plus other businesses.
Fucking A. We gotta talk about real estate. That seems like— I've always said real estate has the highest ratio of dumb to rich people. Like, there's a shit ton of dumb rich people in real estate.
Yeah, I love that line. That's another good shirt one.
It is. I mean, like, if you think about, like, not dumb, but like, tech has like a lot of high IQ people, but maybe not as many rich people. Real estate, you don't have to be that smart to be awesome.
Yeah. If you took— so the idea is if you took all people who have, let's say, over $5 million in net worth, and then you said, okay, by industry, how'd you make your money? And then you map their IQs and you said, which has the lowest average or median IQ? It's either good. Number one is going to be inheritance. And number two is, I think, going to be real estate.
Yeah, for sure. We got to talk about real estate next time. All right, well, good episode.
Yeah, cool.
We're out.